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Pope Benedict XVI- Angelus |
Angelus
On the Our Father
"Words of Sacred Scripture That We Have Known Since Childhood"
H.H. Benedict XVI
July 25, 2010
www.zenit.org
Dear
Brothers and Sisters!
This Sunday’s Gospel presents us with Jesus recollected in prayer, a
bit apart from his disciples. When he finished, one of them said:
“Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Jesus did not object, he did
not offer strange or esoteric formulas, but with great simplicity
said: “When you pray, say: ‘Father…,’” and taught the Our Father
(cf. Luke 11:2-4), drawing from his own prayer, with which he
addresses God, his Father. St. Luke hands down the Our Father to us
in a briefer form than we find in the Gospel of St. Matthew, which
has entered into common use. We are before the first words of sacred
Scripture that we have known since childhood. They fix themselves in
the memory, they form our lives, they accompany us until our last
breaths. They reveal that “we are in no way already complete as sons
of God, but we must more and more become so and be so through our
ever deeper communion with Jesus. Being sons becomes equivalent to
following Christ” (Benedetto XVI, “Gesù di Nazaret,” Milano 2007, p.
168).
This prayer also incorporates and expresses human material and
spiritual needs: “Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us
our sins” (Luke 11:3-4). It is precisely because of everyday needs
and difficulties that Jesus forcefully exhorts: “I say to you: Ask
and you shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall
be opened to you. Because whoever asks receives and whoever seeks
finds and for whoever knocks it is opened” (Luke 11:9-10). It is not
an asking to satisfy one’s own wants but rather to keep alive one’s
friendship with God, who -- the Gospel always says -- “shall give
the Holy Spirit to those who ask for him!” (Luke 11:13).
It was experienced by the ancient “Desert Fathers” and
contemplatives of every age, who through prayer, became friends of
God, like Abraham, who implored the Lord to save the few just people
from the extermination of the city of Sodom (cf. Genesis 18:23-32).
St. Teresa of Avila said to her sisters: “We must beg God always to
free us from every danger and to take away every evil from us. And
however imperfect our desire, we must make an effort to persist in
this request. What does it cost us to ask so much, given that we
address the Omnipotent?” (“Cammino,” 60 (34), 4, in Opere complete,
Milano 1998, p. 846).
Every time we recite the Our Father our voice interweaves with the
voice of the Church, because no one who prays is ever alone. “Each
one of the faithful must try to seek and can find in the truth and
wealth of Christian prayer, taught by the Church, his own way, his
own style of prayer … he will thus let himself be guided … by the
Holy Spirit, who leads him, through Christ, to the Father”
(Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter on certain
aspects of Christian meditation,” 15 October 1989, 29: AAS 82
[1990], 378).
Today is the feast of the Apostle James known as “the Greater,” who
left his father and his work as a fisherman to follow Jesus and give
his life for him -- the first among the Apostles to do so. From my
heart I address a special thought to the many pilgrims traveling to
Santiago de Compostela! May the Virgin Mary help us to rediscover
the beauty and the profundity of Christian prayer.
[The Pope then greeted the pilgrims in various languages. In Italian
he said:]
Dear brothers and sisters, I learned with sadness of the tragedy
that occurred in Duisburg, Germany, where many young people were
killed. I commend the dead, the injured and their families to the
Lord in prayer.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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